


I'm Coming Out (But Only You Can Know)

by renegadegriffin



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: Coming Out, M/M, SOFT GAYS, gentle love and mutual support, repressed gays try to talk about their feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:53:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28504047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renegadegriffin/pseuds/renegadegriffin
Summary: The Captain believes that nothing much can change any more, decades into the grey eternity of ghosthood. Pat's about to prove him wrong.
Relationships: Pat Butcher/The Captain (Ghosts TV 2019)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 61





	1. The Captain's Malaise

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've written in about six years, so please be kind! Gotta bulk up that Pat/Cap tag.

Tuesday again, the Captain thinks absently. He’s ignoring Thomas, who is taking advantage of a captive audience to perform a fresh – and awful – draft of an ode to Alison’s eyes. Pat listens intently, likely preparing encouraging remarks once Thomas stops talking. Lady Button frowns throughout, wincing at the occasional ‘racy’ line. 

The Captain is bored to numbness, though he keeps his shoulders square and heels together in the very picture of attentiveness. He thinks he probably stopped listening around eight minutes ago. 

He’d ask why he still bothers coming to these things, though he knows the answer. What else is there? Alison and her chap are clearing some part of the grounds, so no entertainment there. And Button House is, after all these years, so familiar that he could make his way around it with his eyes closed, notwithstanding the ghostly ability to walk through walls. 

It says something about a deathless eternity that walking through walls is no longer interesting.

Apparently Thomas has finished – or at least, Pat is encouraging him to stop talking with enthusiastic applause. The Captain joins in with two or three stiff claps. As the ghosts disperse to their own activities, he strides into the next room to make it look as if he, too, has other things to do with his time. 

At 1600 hours, Alison and her chap will be forced to come back inside as the sun goes down.  
At 1900 hours, or thereabouts, they’ll have dinner.  
At 2200 hours, or thereabouts, they’ll go to bed.  
At 0300 hours, Lady Button will leap from the upstairs window.  
At 0630 hours, Alison will wander downstairs in search of caffeine. 

And round it goes again, the Captain thinks with a sigh. Nothing ever _changes_. And nothing ever could. While being a ghost offered the opportunity to watch the world change around him, at times like this it only really brings home the realisation that he won’t. His undeath stretches out before him with no reason to hope for anything different, anything exciting, ever again.

“Everything alright?” Pat’s voice from the doorway. 

The Captain starts. “Ah, yes. Yes. Just… surveying the grounds, you know.” He gestures out the window. 

Pat comes to stand beside him. “Beautiful this time of year, isn’t it?” he offers.

“Y… yes. I suppose you’re right. I hadn’t really thought about it.” The Captain chuckles sharply. “I suppose it’s not much different from last year. Or the year before, et cetera,” he added, dropping his light tone almost – almost – by accident.

“That’s… Is that true?” Pat peers up at him. “You alright?” he asks. 

The Captain steps backward. “Of course, yes. Just… I find myself lost in thought, as the days shorten.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

The Captain hesitates. Pat won’t pry, he knows that, but he’s also the least likely of all the ghosts to make fun of him. Or to tell the others. “I find myself…” he begins suddenly, before he can change his mind, “lacking direction, Patrick. I mean, I’ve made my physical condition something of a project of late, but… I know, really, that it won’t make a difference. I’m reliant on Alison’s goodwill to learn anything new, by way of page-turning and so forth.”

“Or Julian,” Pat points out helpfully. 

The Captain grimaces. “Of course, I’m not one to complain,” he adds hurriedly. “Compared to the years Mary and Kitty have spent here – and Robin, by God! I simply cannot complain about the grey eternity stretching out before us. And yes, there are things I wish I’d done in life, but death is hardly the place for them either. In any case, they certainly don’t add up to a convenient list of things to do before I can pass on.”

“Is that what you’d like to do?” Pat says quietly as the Captain draws breath. “Pass on?”

The Captain hesitates, warned to caution by something in Pat’s voice. “I’ve… thought upon it. As I’m sure we all have.” There’s a hint of a question to his tone.

“Do you think that’s all it takes to pass on, then?” Pat asks. “Doing the things you wish you’d done when you were alive?”

The Captain has to remind himself that Pat is the younger ghost of the two of them. Though they often rival for leadership of the group, he has decades of death on the Scout Leader. “I would imagine it helps,” he says mildly. “But you’re still here. I mean, after you saw your grandchild. And then at the wedding…”

“Oh, yeah. That was really great, yeah,” Pat agrees. “But it’s not like I didn’t have other regrets. Other things I wish I’d done.”

The Captain stays silent. If Pat wishes to share, he hopes he knows he can. But he doesn’t want to pry if Pat doesn’t want to talk. 

From somewhere else in the house, there’s an echoing crash, and a frustrated cry. Julian, the Captain thinks.

“I wish I’d told my wife I was gay,” Pat says all at once. 

The Captain freezes. He’s suddenly tremendously grateful for being a ghost, and for not having to breathe. 

“Well, not… I mean, I loved her. Don’t get me wrong, I loved her, and the life we built. But I wish I’d told her… that I loved men as well as women. Love, I mean.” He looks up at the Captain anxiously. “You don’t think saying it’s enough to make me pass on, do you? I mean, I still regret not telling her, and I’ve only told you, so that’s not going to change things, right?”

The Captain can’t keep his face under control and marshal his thoughts enough to speak at the same time. He simply stares at Pat in silence. 

Pat stares back for a moment, as if he’s waiting for something. Then he faces the window again, something despondent in his eyes. “Well, I’m still here,” he says. “So I suppose it won’t.”

“Indeed,” the Captain says weakly. With a surge of effort, he adds, “we’re glad to have you, Patrick.” 

Pat glances back up at him with a sad smile – but it’s a smile, at least. “Thanks, Cap,” he says. He nudges his shoulder against the Captain’s arm. “I’m glad to be here too.”

They stand in comfortable silence for a while, before the Captain clears his throat. “Well, I should patrol the perimeter. A walk will do me good, I think.”

“Alright,” Pat replies easily. “I hope it helps, with the, you know... Erm, see you at dinner?”

“Yes,” the Captain says quickly. “Of course.”

As he strides, this time with actual purpose, through the hallways of Button House, he allows his face to do what it will and concentrates on memorising every hint of Pat’s tone and facial expression as he spoke on his regrets. On one regret in particular.


	2. The Captain's Confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Listen, it's only fair that the Captain returns the gesture. It'd be rude not to.

It takes the Captain 48 hours, or thereabouts, before he seeks Pat out. It takes a further 45 minutes of awkward loitering before Pat is alone, and their ghostly comrades seem occupied enough that interruption is unlikely. 

“Oh, hey, Cap,” Pat says cheerfully. 

“Would you walk with me, Patrick?” the Captain asks briskly. 

“Sure,” Pat shrugs and smiles. “Not much else to do, is there?”

“Quite,” the Captain murmurs. He leads Pat downstairs and out of the front door, breathing in deep as they exit into the cold air and pretending he can feel cold air in his lungs. He has no plan other than to take a turn about the grounds, as Lady Button would say, in an attempt to ensure they won’t be overheard. 

“I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day,” he began awkwardly. “On Tuesday, after Thomas’ recital.”

He knows from Pat’s momentary misstep that Pat knows exactly what he’s talking about. “Oh yeah?” he says after a second, his voice light enough perhaps to fool Kitty. 

“I apologise for not responding in an appropriate manner,” the Captain says. “I appreciate that was difficult to share, and I should have been… well, better.”

“I get it,” Pat says quietly. “I barely knew how to talk about it at all. I’d imagine you talked about it even less in your time.”

“We’re not in my time anymore,” the Captain says, dodging an actual answer. “And in fact, that was… well, I thought it only fair that I return the favour.” He’s aware he’s stopped walking. He’s grateful for his extra inches as he stares over Pat’s head, comfortably at attention as he works out how to say the words he’s been screaming in his head for two days. Pat waits patiently, looking just past the Captain to give him the space he needs to speak. 

“I loved a man, once,” the Captain says. The relief of hearing the words out of his own head makes him want to cry, but he’s used to keeping himself together in the face of strong emotion. Stiff upper lip, and all that. “His name was Havers. He was my lieutenant. I… I’d like to think he felt the same, but given he requested a transfer to the Front rather than be under my leadership, I can’t be sure. I… I died without telling anyone. Well, how could I? Even if I had been able to explain myself, the army wouldn’t have had me. Nor my family. I…” he falters, suddenly aware of Pat’s gaze on him. 

For the first time in his memory, the Captain’s unsure. He’s not certain he’s said exactly what he wanted to say, but Pat’s eyes are soft and kind and all of a sudden he’s run out of words. “In any case,” he stammers, and clears his throat. “I felt it only right that you should know, given the trust you displayed. And… that’s all.”

“Thank you, Cap,” Pat says gently, after a moment. “I won’t tell the others, if you don’t want me to-“

“No.”

Pat nods. “But I hope it’s easier for you, that someone else knows. And I’m glad you told me.”

The Captain meets Pat’s eyes for the first time since they came out of the house. “As am I,” he says, surprised to find that it’s true. 

Pat smiles. “If you’d ever like to, I’d love to help, if I can. I think some’ll take it easier than others, but I think that lovely wedding gave everyone a bit of a head start. I’ve been thinking about it myself.”

The Captain nods, straightening up. His chest feels lighter than it has in a long time. “Do you want to walk a little further, before we go back in?”

“That would be lovely,” Pat smiles. 

The Captain thinks about offering Pat his arm, as he would have done for a lady at the dance halls, but his courage fails him. One thing at a time, he thinks, as they stride across the lawn together.


End file.
